t.ford

I flew from Salt Lake City to Minneapolis yesterday – first-class, suckas.

When I book a ticket on Kayak or Orbitz, sometimes I like to click the first-class box just to see how ungodly the fare is to sit in a leather seat. I’d never pay for it, but knowing how much more it is to sit on the other side of the velvet curtain does allow me to judge those first class people on the way back to my coach seat. When I finally get on the plane, they’ve been sitting there with their shoes off, drinking something complimentary on the rocks, and making money on their blackberrys and laptops even as I’m walking by them.

Bunch of showoffs; why do they think they’re so much better than me?

That’s what I used to think until yesterday. My first flight outta SLC was oversold, so they offered me a voucher for another plane ticket, and upgraded me to first class if I took a later flight. I said, “But of course,” in a British accent and, an hour later, was getting my feet rubbed by two flight attendants whom I named Numero Ocho and Buzzsaw. Before the doors were even shut, I was having to hold my third cup of Carmel-Apple Cider really close to my nose so I wouldn’t smell all those “coachees” as they ran back to their end of the plane. That’s when it hit me: we actually are so much better than them.

Being new to the customs, I couldn’t help but stare back through the curtain at all the riffraff. Me and my people would wager our real pieces of New York Cheesecake and baby-back Alligator ribs on which of them would win as we threw bags of little pretzels back into their section, laughing so hard when they got back up off the floor and tried to fit back into their tiny seats. A small group of the more generous “upper-deckers” I sat with talked about sponsoring a whole row of coachees for the upcoming holidays … but that quickly lost steam and we just ended up making scepters out of our real silverware and wine glasses.

So I sat next to a 27 year old guy who just had a job interview in SLC – he thinks he nailed it. He was wearing a really nice suit, watch and shoes … slick. We both tried our best to be interested in each other’s lives that kept getting less interesting the more information we’d volunteer. But overall I’d say this guy was pretty cool. I learned he was just about to get married to a girl here in the cities, and he seemed to enjoy answering all the questions I could think to ask about them and their coming nuptials. He spoke really highly of Angel, his fiance.

After we ran out of things to talk about, I went for the ipod, and Jon went for his porn.

No seriously, Jon looked at a porn magazine for about an hour and a half, making no effort to be discreet about what he was holding way too high in front of him. It was as disturbing as it was fascinating. Every passenger that walked by on the way to the bathroom did a double-take, and the poor flight attendant had to talk to him while he’d barely look up as he ordered his food or refills of Jack Daniels. I would hear him kinda chuckle so I’d look over and he would be staring at a page with no words on it, just pictures of naked girls.

After a while, I take my headphones outta my ears, and he leans over and says, “Ya know, I feel kinda bad sitting here in a nice suit, holding a magazine with [this] on the cover,” as he points to the front page, “but this magazine is so funny, man. You ever read it?” He reacted like I punched his grandma in the stomach when I told him I’d never seen it before. “Oh man, I’ll have to pass it your way when I’m done!”

I’d have preferred not to have such a decent conversation with him just minutes ago. He was a normal guy back then, who looked forward to his new wife and was mildly interested to hear about my trip out to California. Now I couldn’t help but wonder if he thought she just wasn’t pleasing enough to him, or if he kept this part of his life a secret, or did he think that porn was just a normal thing that guys do and that “our women” would understand – knowing that no matter how he’d answer either of those questions, it still didn’t make sense to me.

There’s something subtly diabolical about porn to me. I feel like if most Christians walked around with the knowledge of how destructive and divisive porn is to marriages, families and the hearts of men and women, it would be just as justifiable to declare war on those that produce it, as it’s been for us to declare war on terrorists (not that I support killing either of them). After all, what’s more worth holding onto, our life here on earth or strong marriages and families built on respect, faith, hope and sacrificial-love?